Tuesday, August 14, 2018

"Je fus li chevaliers navré"

Vinaver again, talking about interlace in the early romances:
When about eight hundred pages after the first appearance of the wounded knight and some time after the last occurrence of the theme we meet the knight again and discover, for the first time, that his name is Trahans le Gai, his remark: 'Je fus li chevaliers navré' is intended for those who have not forgotten any detail of the earlier episodes.  The assumption is not only that the reader's memory is infallible, but that the exercise of such a memory is in itself a pleasurable pursuit which carries with it its own reward.
Vinaver pp. 82-83 (footnote omitted).

So I was familiar with navré in modern French, but wondered about its meaning in OF.  Here's what wiktionary has to say about its etymology:
Past participle of navrer (“to upset, dismay”), from Middle French, from Old French navrer, nafrer (“to hurt by piercing or cutting”), from Old Norse nafra (“to pierce or bore with an auger”), from nafarr (“auger”), from Proto-Germanic *nabagairaz (“auger", literally "nave-spear”). Cognate with Old English nafogār (“auger”), Old High German nabagēr (“auger”). More at auger.
Or, as the Anglo-Norman Dictionary suggests, naufré as adjective might simply be translated as "wounded" (see http://www.anglo-norman.net/gate/ nafrer).

And just as fus is the passé simple of être in modern French, fus appears to be a past form of estre in earlier phrases of the language (see http://www.anglo-norman.net/gate/ estre3).

So perhaps the above-referenced phrase means something like "I was the pierced (wounded) knights" - i.e., the knights Lancelot slew or wounded in avenging him as requested?

1 comment:

Lisa said...

Thank you so much, I am reading Vinavers book right now and was wondering about the meaning of this phrase